New Sports

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4EverPurple&Gold
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Joined: Thu Jul 22, 2021 12:10 pm

Would like to know everyone's take on our new sports we are adding:

Stunt, bowling and beach volleyball 

For those that care:

Stunt - I did not even know what this was until Scott posted about, which also S/O for all the links to these three sports most people don't know a lot about in depth. Feel like I learned a lot, reading this at my office and not doing work.

But I am actually happy on this one, feel like to be apart of a growing sport is exciting. Maybe can help with getting students on campus and get more females attending WIU athletics events. I feel like this is perfect for something to bring the kids to on a weekend. 

Bowling: Love it! When I was a student loved bowling at the union. So hopefully they can remodel and bring the lanes back. Would be a big selling point to recruits you can practice on campus and then grab a bite to eat upstairs. Also foot traffic to get students to come support would be really easy. 

Beach Volleyball: This one I am not a fan of that much. Not sure where we are going to play since those courts in north quad are not in great shape. Also when the season runs isn't great weather in the midwest. Would of liked to see rifle added. Fits the mold of Leathernecks perfect.

Other wise, happy to see Bubb pushing forward and not just sitting in the office collecting a check like the last AD... 
 
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sealhall74
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I know zero about STUNT other than emerging womens sport so who knows how long before the NCAA will be staging national championships for it.  I like the bowling choice.  Given the OVC conference support of both rifle and Beach VB, I would have went with rifle.  Indoors so weather not an issue.  But maybe the cost of setting up a VB court would be considerably less than the cost of setting up a rifle range.  Not sure.  Also maybe Title IX issues that I am not aware of.  But rifle is coed, so who knows.  

In summary, it is just nice to see us moving forward with something new.
 
 
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ST_Lawson
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sealhall74 wrote: Thu May 18, 2023 5:29 pm I know zero about STUNT other than emerging womens sport so who knows how long before the NCAA will be staging national championships for it.  I like the bowling choice.  Given the OVC conference support of both rifle and Beach VB, I would have went with rifle.  Indoors so weather not an issue.  But maybe the cost of setting up a VB court would be considerably less than the cost of setting up a rifle range.  Not sure.  Also maybe Title IX issues that I am not aware of.  But rifle is coed, so who knows.  

In summary, it is just nice to see us moving forward with something new.

 
Bubb did mention adding the women's sports to get us into compliance with Title IX. Rifle is coed, but I don't know if there's any rules on if the team has to be half men, half women or something (or whatever % is stipulated). Also, after looking at the photos in this article, I could see how setting up a rifle team could cost more than beach volleyball. It'd be more than just setting up a rifle course somewhere...there's special uniforms (that look like they have some built-in protective capabilities), the rifles themselves (they look like pretty specialized/expensive rifles), ammunition, and probably other things I'm not even aware of.

Meanwhile, the volleyball courts are still set up near North Quad (just drove past them tonight). There's 3 courts there, probably need new nets, and could use a truckload of sand and whatever they do to pull out/kill the weeds/grass that has started growing there, but I feel like it probably would be cheaper to set up a few beach volleyball courts than to outfit a rifle team. Plus, beach volleyball is a 100% women's sport, so all the money put into it counts towards that side of the Title IX equation.

I do get that rifle makes more sense in terms of our university...big in law enforcement, military/ROTC plus the "Leatherneck" name and USMC history, lots of area kids growing up using rifles for hunting, etc. but I'm sure they ran the numbers on both scenarios (or really, any of the potential sports we could add) and the ones we went with were probably the most inexpensive way to get us on the right side of Title IX.

Also, with beach volleyball, the tennis courts right next to them could be used as something of a "staging area" for teams, refs, or whatever, and there's enough grassy area around them for family/friends/fans to set up chairs to watch or even set up a small set of bleachers or something.

Other sports that could have been added (like, women's sports that we don't have that are currently NCAA sports): Field Hockey, Fencing (co-ed sport), Gymnastics, Ice Hockey, Rifle (co-ed), Swimming & Diving, Lacrosse, Water Polo. Technically skiing and rowing also, but we don't have anything close to the terrain necessary to pull those off. Most of those sports would cost a LOT more than beach volleyball to set up, with the possible exception of swimming & diving, since we did have that sport before and I believe the pool is still used by the SCUBA program, so it's not like it hasn't been kept up. The problem with that is the OVC doesn't have swimming & diving, so we'd either have to try to get into the MVC (that's where Little Rock has their swim team) or come crawling back to the Summit for just swimming and diving and then we're still schlepping the team off to Denver or South Dakota. EIU, Lindenwood, and Southern Indiana do have swimming and diving in the Summit League though.

In the "emerging sports" category (new sports that the NCAA does recognize, but doesn't have enough schools to officially sanction a championship) we have Acrobatics and Tumbling, Rugby, Women's Wrestling. Those could have been possibilities as well, but again, I'm sure they looked at all the options and decided that the three they went with were going to be the most inexpensive in terms of setting up facilities and equipment.
Scott Lawson - Board Admin
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Member of the Marching Leathernecks - 1996-2000
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